As if shoving Copilot in every corner of the Windows 11 operating system wasn’t enough, Microsoft was recently spotted secretly sending user’s game captures to train its Gaming Copilot AI feature. This was reported by ResetEra user “RedbullCola” who saw some of the network traffic sending “everything” to Microsoft, including one unreleased game under NDA.
Another Microsoft Privacy Invasion?
Some of the things the supposed “feature” was recording, according to the user, include screenshots and text extracted from OCR; all of these behaviors can be traced back to a setting called “Model training on text”, which can be accessed via Game Bar (Win+G), then the Settings button on lower left, which displays Privacy Settings under the Gaming Copilot section. This setting is enabled by default, and Microsoft has made no notice to the user of being such unless they dig deep into the settings.
Effectively, this means as soon as Windows 11 is set up (which automatically installs the Gaming Copilot AI feature), your gaming session will be constantly monitored and scraped for AI training, unless you explicitly turn it off. Sounds like a slam dunk privacy violation to me. Besides the screenshot and OCRs, there is also an additional feature labeled “Model training on voice” that collects vocal conversations in-game, although somewhat fortunately, that feature is off by default.
This is far from the first attempt from software companies to sneak their way into privacy violations, and it certainly won’t be the last. With the recent demise of Windows 10, moves like this will only push gamers away from Windows 11 and starts considering Linux-based options, especially as gaming on Linux is progressively becoming more viable over time.
Source: Wccftech
Pokdepinion: Disappointed but not surprised is what I’ll say.
